Chapter 268: Chapter 112: Snowy Night and Lantern Flowers_2
Su Nan City had not seen significant snowfall for ten years, and the snow on Luomei Peak was different from that in the city. She had originally planned to bring this jar of snow back up the mountain, never expecting it to be used here.
Lu Tong placed the jar on the fire, where the crystal-clear Wax Snow slowly turned into transparent water and gradually emitted steam, boiling noisily as if the frozen clouds from the mountain streams had been tainted with the dust of the mortal world, coming to life once again.
Lu Tong then took a handkerchief from her bosom and soaked it in the boiling Wax Snow.
The man in black quietly watched Lu Tong do all this.
Finally, Lu Tong took the wet handkerchief and walked towards him.
He sat upright, and Lu Tong moved behind him, gently peeling back his torn clothes further, and when her gaze fell upon the sight before her, she involuntarily caught her breath.
It was only up close that she could see how terribly fierce the man’s wounds were.
Lu Tong took a deep breath, wiped the blood off the wound with the handkerchief, clean, and as the blood-smeared wound was revealed, it looked all the more dreadful. Both the knife and arrow wounds came diagonally from the back and, judging by the direction, he had been stabbed from behind at close range.
She couldn’t help but glance at the man.
The man in black hung his head, his back enshrouded in the warm glow of the snowy night, his emotions hardly discernible.
His posture, however, was as relaxed as usual.
Lu Tong stopped musing and took out the Golden Needle from the floss bag in her medical box.
The Golden Needle was something Lady Yun no longer wanted. Lady Yun had many needles and sometimes, when she felt the ones she had used for a while were not to her liking, she would discard them. Lu Tong would pick up those needles, select the usable ones, and hide them in her own box. Lady Yun, upon seeing this, would not comment.
Sometimes she would use those needles to sew medicine bags, but she had never used one to stitch wounds before, especially since, over the past few years, she had mostly touched the cold bodies in the piles of dead at Chaos Burial Mound and execution grounds.
She was not familiar with the bodies of the living.
The man in black said, "What are you doing, taking advantage of me?"
Lu Tong: "..."
She put aside her initial reverence and caution for the living body and stuck the needle in.
The man in black grunted.
Lu Tong said indifferently, "Sorry, it’s my first time stitching a wound, I’m not very practiced."
The man in black didn’t speak.
Lu Tong then bent over and began to sew.
The thread was mulberry bark fiber, of which Lady Yun had plenty, sometimes used on rabbits and foxes being experimented on at Luomei Peak. Lu Tong had secretly kept a small roll and had not expected to use it here.
Normally, one should apply a sealing ointment after such stitching, topped with a plaster to disperse blood, but she had nothing in her box at the moment.
However, considering that this man was still bouncing around lively, even without these medicines, he should be able to make it through.
Lu Tong was very meticulous in her stitching.
At the beginning, she was a bit nervous, her fingers trembling and her movements unsteady since this was the first time she was stitching someone’s wound. However, she gradually relaxed; the person under her needle was cooperative, silent, though raw stitching must have been painful, not a hint of the pain was shown.
On this bitterly cold day, amidst a desolate wilderness and falling snow, the quiet light of a lamp in an old temple encompassed the sole brightness.
Stumbling along for who knows how long, Lu Tong broke off the last thread of mulberry bark fiber, stored the Golden Needle back on the floss, then used the wet handkerchief to clean the overflow of blood, revealing a wound resembling an ugly centipede.
A terribly ugly centipede at that.
Lu Tong: "..."
The man in black slightly turned his head, whether he saw the stitching clearly or not was unknown, but after a moment of silence, he said, "Your needlework is really poor."
Lu Tong felt somewhat guilty.
Back in Changwu County, when she was young and restless, she had always disliked these needle and thread tasks the most. Even Lu Qian did needlework better than she did. Later, at Luomei Peak, she could barely manage sewing a medicine bag, but stitching for this man was admittedly not something to be proud of. One should know his physique was attractive, with the lines of his shoulders and back more sleek and smooth than any corpse she had seen, now awkwardly stitched so awry, as if someone had scribbled at random on a piece of exquisite silk.
An absolute eyesore.
"Thank you," said the man in black, not minding her poor needlework and thanking her lightly.
Lu Tong was somewhat surprised.
She had not expected him to be so easy to talk to. In fact, aside from threatening her at the execution ground at the beginning to guide him, he had been quite polite all along, even appearing to be in a good mood. During the period Lu Tong stitched his wound, whether inadvertently or deliberately, she tugged at his injury, yet he did not complain, as if he did not notice her vengeful intent, or even if he did, he endured it.